10 Biggest Continuity Errors in MCU Movies

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is the most detailed, extended, and well-crafted cinematic experience of modern times. The universe has given fans a decade full of iconic movies, heroes, and storytelling, which would live on to entertain generations for at least a century. With such a humongous cinematic universe with dozens of heroes, their solo movies, and epic crossovers, there are bound to be incidences when the story goes sideways.

It would have been difficult for the MCU to carve out a foolproof plan up to Avengers: Endgame since the studio’s survival depended heavily on Iron Man’s success. Even though no other cinematic universe has been able to pull off what the MCU has, the viewers can’t really help but pinpoint a few discontinuity errors that still get on their nerves.

10 Doctor Strange Couldn’t See Thanos Coming

Doctor Strange’s titular character solidified the MCU’s journey into mystic arts and possible multiverses. The sorcerer of mystic arts has been such a formidable force that he single-handedly confronted the Asgardian brothers in Thor: Ragnarok, thinking their arrival threatened Earth again. This is when Stephen Strange quite arrogantly tells Thor that it’s his duty to know about all sorts of mystic and cosmic threats that might potentially endanger the planet’s peace. However, when Bruce Banner crash lands into the sanctuary in Avengers: Infinity War, Strange says his iconic dialogue, “Who?” when Bruce tells him of Thanos’s arrival.

As Master of the Mystic Arts and holder of the Time Stone, fans found it hard to believe that Strange didn’t have the slightest clue of Thanos’s arrival. Even though he had prior knowledge of the power of the stones, he could’ve kept a watchful eye on the subject, especially when the concept of the infinity stones had been teased in the Avengers: Age of Ultron.

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The MCU has done great things with its heroes, but one thing that drives the fans nuts is Marvel’s calculated error with key superhero birthdays. The exhibit in The Winter Soldier that Steve visits features 1916 as Bucky’s birthdate. However, in the same exhibit, it says “1917 -1944,” which directly refutes Armin Zola’s confirmation that it was 1945. And it’s not only Bucky; the same thing repeats with Natasha in the same movie.

Hydra’s AI claims that Natasha was born in 1984, but the detail was recently contradicted in Black Widow, where the titular spy’s file featured the date 1983. The fans haven’t understood this subtle yet evident mistake in birth dates, especially when it’s the same difference between different heroes. It’s difficult to understand whether it’s deliberate or a genuine continuity error.

8 Nobody Talks About the Giant Celestial In the Indian Ocean

The gigantic Celestial left unattended in the middle of the Indian Ocean in the Eternals is a running meme among the MCU fandom. The uncanny forgetfulness of the MCU’s events occurring outside of a given hero’s movie is cryptic, considering these heroes eventually end up in a shared universe. Even though the events of Infinity War and Endgame significantly impact the world featured in the Eternals, no one addressed this huge Phase 4 error in the ocean in the upcoming movies, not even the TV series.

It’s weird that the studio never addressed a mountain-sized statue protruding from the water. The Emergence was an important event, but things continued as if it never happened in the same universe, considering the content that came out after the movie. Fans have been left wondering whether it’s a deliberate omission or an honest mistake of lack of continuity.

7 Loki’s Mind-Controlling Ability

The God of Mischief is a lot of things, but having mind-controlling abilities and telekinesis without the Mind Stone is kind of stretching it. If Loki had mind-control powers since the beginning, why did he need the Mind Stone to control Hawkeye and the other agents? Loki was already controlling Eric Selvig in Thor’s post-credit scene, so why was the scepter emphasized in the movie? It was deemed a vital medium to execute mind control because if it wasn’t, then Loki could have controlled Tony in the tower.

It’s possible that this little detail became mundane or ambiguous compared to the enormity of The Avengers’ plot. The omission of Loki controlling minds without the scepter could be to highlight the grand entrance of the Infinity Stones in the MCU and to set a solid ground for the Mind Stone.

6 Gamora’s Origin Story Altered Key Points

In a rather heart-wrenching flashback, it’s revealed that a young Gamora was picked up by Thanos for her fierceness when he was ruthlessly murdering half of her race. But that’s the thing: it was always implied that Thanos wanted only half of every civilization gone so the rest could thrive. However, it’s narrated by Nova Corpsman Rhomann Dey in Guardians of the Galaxy that Gamora is the last surviving Zehoberei. The feisty alien warrior also mentioned that Thanos murdered her parents in front of her and tortured her.

However, in Infinity War, it is clearly proven that Thanos only murdered half of Gamora’s people, and when the genocide took place, her father was MIA. Either some apocalyptic event happened after Thanos’s invasion, or the studio just forgot about this tiny detail.

5 The MCU’s Favorite Number is Eight

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When it comes to the magic number, it’s eight for the MCU. Whether it’s setting up the timeline for a cosmic event or a team fight, it has to be within eight years. Everyone knows how crucial the timeline is for the first three phases because that’s how the audience knows when these different characters came together under a common ideology. The fans aren’t forgetting the Homecoming eight-year error anytime soon, but a Vision slip-up is something that no one expected.

He’s supposed to be the smartest being on the planet next to Tony Stark, but in Captain America: Civil War, he declares that it’s been eight years since Stark announced he was Iron Man. Everyone knows it’s give or take six years between the two events, making it hard to ignore these “eight years” errors.

4 The Gauntlet’s Origins In Infinity War

Even though Thanos’s invasion wasn’t far behind after the big reveal of the Infinity Gauntlet in Age of Ultron, the scene left fans with more questions than answers. The Gauntlet first appeared in Odin’s vault in Thor, but then it was shown in Age of Ultron without the stones. Thankfully, Hela cleared in Ragnarok that the one in the vault was fake. It was all good from there until, in Infinity War, Thor goes to Nidavellir and finds out how Thanos tortured the dwarves into making the Infinity Gauntlet.

That means those events had recently happened because if they did a long time ago, how would Asgard not notice Nidavellir’s neutron star going out or Eitri wondering the place alone for so long? This also puts a question mark on when the events of Age of Ultron’s post-credit scene occur.

3 Thor Wasn’t the First Alien on Earth

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It’s understandable that the MCU had not set up things as far as just before and after the events of Endgame. Something that was said in 2012 contradicted something that happened in the ’90s in the same timeline, creating a wormhole that spewed out more and more continuity and timeline errors, just like the one in Captain Marvel. Nick Fury declares in Thor, which took place in 2012, that Thor is the first alien to visit Earth. Not only that, but he also implies in The Avengers that it was because of Thor and Loki’s standoff that they had to use the Tesseract’s power to make weapons.

If that was true, what about Carol Danvers in 1995? It’s hard to tell with Nick Fury whether he deliberately kept this information from the Avengers or an honest plot hole. Captain Marvel was so focused on telling Fury’s origin that the movie missed this little detail.

One of the biggest MCU continuity errors that bother the fandom more than anything is the incorrect timeline of Homecoming narrated in the movie. It was an iconic moment seeing Spider-Man catch Captain America’s shield, and everyone knew right then that this was the start of something epic. Fast forward, the fans get Spider-Man: Homecoming, and since Peter had already debuted in Civil War, it was imperative that he fit like a piece of puzzle in the MCU timeline. The movie opens with a blatant “After Eight Years” following the events of The Avengers.

That’s all good until the audience realizes that Homecoming was supposed to occur two months after Civil War. The film is supposed to be set sometime in 2016, but eight years would mean the audience meets Parker in 2020, which is a huge continuity error. The good thing is that the studio admits this error and addresses it in the Official MCU Timeline Book.

One of the biggest loopholes in the MCU that still drives the fans nuts is Steve Rogers’s conclusion in Endgame. The whole time heist was confusing, to begin with, but then the studio decided to give Cap his happily ever after, but that threw every logical thing about the MCU’s time travel concept out of the window. When Steve was tasked with returning the Infinity Stones at the exact moment they were taken from the timeline, he decided to stay behind and live his life with Peggy. How does that affect everything that Cap has done or not done?

It’s possible that he lived the 70 years that he was frozen for in the past, but that definitely creates the possibility of an alternate timeline. Even for some reason, everything makes sense about Cap’s decision; it’s hard to imagine that he’d be in the exact same place he left but older. It seems like not a lot of time was put into this narrative, and the MCU still has some explaining to do for this major continuity error.